We picked up our rental car in Walterboro, SC, selecting a 3-door Hyundai with a hatchback and fold-down rear seats, ideal for transporting our bike and gear.  The rest of the morning was spent dismantling and packing the bicycle and transferring the camping gear and whatever bike gear wouldn’t fit in the cases to the big duffel.  One of the 30-year-old front panniers had been breached by a loading problem that allowed a portion to drag on the pavement in left turns, so it was left in the trash.  The other we kept, for now, with a few extra items.

We used the car to find a good Mexican Restaurant in town and espresso, at Dunkin Donuts, of all places.  I can’t recall having been in one since leaving Newport over 35 years ago, so ordered a French Cruller, those light, eggy “tractor wheel” donuts I used to get, “back in the day.”  They didn’t have espresso, then.  We also stopped at Walmart to add to our only set of street clothes and replace the small, worn duffel bag we had thrown away in Orlando after loading the bike panniers.  Unlike the fictional wandering scourge of bad guys, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher character, we did not throw out our old clothes, though at the cost of laundromats, it might be cheaper.  The laundry in Walterboro took a debit card, which cost $2 plus whatever value needed to wash clothes: another patron had an extra one, empty, so we gratefully accepted hers, reloaded it with enough to wash and dry a load ($5), and passed it on to yet another customer, with enough value left for 10 minutes dryer time.

The next morning, we set out toward Charleston, stopping by the Walterboro airport to visit the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial: this is where the famous group of African-American fighter pilots had their final training before entering combat in Europe.  With only the bicycle GPS, we got lost several times on the way to Charleston, and have since switched to using Judy’s iPhone mapping app.  We did set out on the road we would have ridden, US 17-A, and found it even more heavily trafficked and just as badly repaired as the many miles we had already ridden.  In the days since, we have daily reaffirmed our decision to abandon the bicycle tour: many of the roads we have traveled have been uncomfortable and dangerous even  in a car, due to poor repair, poor construction, and heavy traffic.

Arriving finally in Charleston, we headed across the Ravenel Bridge to Mount Pleasant, where we took a tour boat to Fort Sumter, the island fortress at the mouth of the harbor where the first shots were fired in the War Between the States (aka, the War of Northern Aggression [Confederacy] or the Civil War [Union].  The fort had been reduced to mostly rubble by both sides during the war 1861-1865 war, with a blocky “new” section added during the Spanish-American War of 1898.

With the advantage (or liability) of a car, we stayed 30 km outside the city, at Goose Creek, where low motel costs offset the cost of fuel to get there.  We found an excellent Mexican restaurant within walking distance (on a rough trail along the highway — no shoulder,  no walkway) and had black bean and portabello tacos.   The next day, we drove downtown and parked near the corner of Queen and King streets and took a horse-drawn carriage tour of part of the historical district, near the University of Charleston, one of three routes randomly chosen for the carriages.  Afterward, we had a vegetarian lunch at a middle-eastern restaurant near the market, where we learned this was their last week after 10 years, due to loss of lease.  In the afternoon, we took a walking tour to parts of the historic district we didn’t cover by carriage, then back to Goose Creek.

The next morning, wrapping up our third week on tour, we took the I-526 bypass to Mount Pleasant, then up US 17, covering in a day what would have taken a week of long rides on bad roads on the bicycle, something we would not have been capable of, due to our slow speed and the effects of too many days in the saddle fighting headwinds and rough roads.  We enjoyed a quick tour through the historic district of Georgetown, and were astonished at the 60-km commercial strip that is Myrtle Beach and its suburbs.  In the 43 years or so since I last visited what used to be a championship golf mecca (in my case, the venue for a business conference–selected by our golfing bosses), the Beach has been transformed.  The US 17 strip was filled with Disneyesque theme-park miniature golf courses in multiple versions of pirate, jungle, dinosaur, volcano, and other exotic themes, alternating with huge storefronts selling beachwear or surfing equipment, with a dozen or more pancake houses and scores of other restaurants, resorts, and hotels.

We soon crossed into North Carolina, stopping for lunch at a bistro in downtown Wilmington and coffee in Jacksonville before crossing the spectacular bridge at New Bern and turning north away from the coast to overnight at Chocowinity, just outside Washington, NC, deviating from our planned bicycle tour path to avoid the expensive auto ferry to the Outer Banks.

The third week of our “Cycling Beyond 70” expedition begins with a steady drizzle.  It has been raining all night.  There is no breakfast service at our motel, and no restaurants nearby, except for a Subway in one of the two convenience stores nearby.  The motel proprietor told us there was a Dunkin Donuts on the other side of the freeway, but we aren’t going that way.  We eat what we purchased in the village of Hardeeville the day before and venture into the rain.

We discover that the rough roads yesterday have dislodged the trailer hitch, which is dangling loosely from the chain stay.  We tighten it under the motel lobby canopy, under the gaze of one of the elder members of the owner’s family, curious about our mode of transportation, no doubt wondering if this is a side of America he didn’t count on when he emigrated.  We bid him farewell and push off into the rainy morning.

The old road parallels Interstate 95, carrying tourists, snowbirds, and freight between Boston and Miami.  Our road is relatively traffic-free, but has enough local traffic to keep us on the side, where it was widened haphazardly in 1964 when the freeway was built and poorly maintained since, heavily grooved in both directions and sloppily patched here and there. We have decided to stop at the next town, Ridgeland, making a short day in the rain, 21 km, half the distance we came yesterday.  The road improves near town, but traffic builds, where large trucks grind to a crawl behind us until it is safe to pass.  There is no shoulder, of course, and the white line, which touches the grass, is ribbed with a rumble strip, so we ride in the lane. 

Ridgeland greets us with a row of derelict or defunct motels and eateries, but the center of town is still alive, with a grocery and other thriving businesses.  This time, the freeway interchange is less than a kilometer from the city center, and surrounded by businesses.  We finally get a hot meal, at the Waffle House across the street from our motel.  We order off the placemat “favorites,” unaware that there is a full menu available.  Waffle House is such a fixture in the South that no one else needs a menu, and the staff expects you to know your order without looking.  Our waitress is amazed that we come from a place where there are no Waffle Houses.  As usual, it is necessary to order ala carte to leave out the meats.

The rain has subsided, but it is windy (a headwind, of course), and cold.  Too early for normal check-in, we wait in the warm lobby for our room to be ready, then shower and nap until dinner time, which is a trip back to the Waffle House, then to the grocery behind (a town with two groceries–unheard of), and to the pharmacy next door for protein bars, our staple meal choice on the road, along with our jar of peanut butter.

Headwinds are forecast for Saturday as well, so we head out early, back into town and north, where the old highway merges with the freeway and we turn onto a frontage road, which is actually adequately paved–until we reach the gravel pit at the top of the next rise, where heavy trucks have hammered it into the same broken ruts we have been riding since Savannah.  We meet a fellow traveler, a homeless person of indeterminate gender and age, who turns out to be a 60-year-old woman pedaling a bike with an enormous backpack and various other bike bags and buckets.  She carefully examines our trailer setup (two stacked suitcases on wheels attached to the bike with a short hydraulic hose).  We move on. eventually coming to a pair of gas stations where we indulge in a bottle of Gatorade and use the rest rooms, which have no towels and a printed set of directions on how to find the light switches, which are down the hall on the hinge side of the doors.

A looping climb to an overpass takes us over the freeway and onto another rough road widened ages ago by covering the old road, including curb and sidewalk, with new asphalt, with the usual drainage and settling issues that make it unsafe even for trucks.  After working hard against the cold north wind for several hours, we come at last to the only restaurant for many miles, a Denny’s attached to a Best Western, having passed a number of defunct motels and footprints of long-disappeared eateries.  Denny’s is packed with locals and freeway travelers.  We wait for a table, then wait some more while the staff regroups from the rush, shivering in our wet bicycle clothes.  Finally, we are served approximately what we thought we ordered, wolf it down, and push off into the wind once more.

Despite the four-lane strip in front of Denny’s, there is no real town of South Point, and the shoulder runs out near a church where a funeral is being held for a prominent citizen, so cars are parked along the highway in both directions.  A bit farther on, the highway divides: we turn left onto the old highway again.  grinding away for more kilometers and up a long hill, past children guffawing at the strange apparition of old white folks on a funny bicycle towing suitcases, then turn toward the freeway once more.  It turns out that Yamassee, South Carolina is not so much a town, but a collection of neighborhoods.  At various times, we pass an auto repair, a decrepit thrift shop, the Family Dollar and Dollar General stores that serve as general stores and groceries for the rural south, and finally, under the freeway to our motel, a former Super 8, now a Rodeway, with the faded yellow ‘8’ still visible on the sign.  The desk clerk writes out the WiFi password in flowing Hindi script, spells it for us in English, but it doesn’t work, despite her insistence that is what it is.  We get sporadic connections to a Comcast xfinitywifi hotspot somewhere nearby, perhaps at one of the three convenience stores across the highway.  Some advertise “dairy,” which consists of a frozen yogurt counter or ice cream bars in a freezer.  There is a Subway in one of them, also.  We retreat to our room, eat peanut butter from our stash, nap, then sleep.

Sunday morning, we drop the key in the key box, then notice we have a flat trailer tire.  We find a leak and patch it with one of the cheap patches that came with the tire tools, of dubious merit, then wait for the Subway to open, wolfing down one of their pre-cooked egg sandwiches before heading off into the cold north wind.  A circuitous route through a neighborhood, where the Deliverance church offers 9:00 am Sunday services, but it is after 9:30 and the building is empty and silent.  Maybe they have been Delivered, or maybe people in this non-town have lost hope.  We finally emerge on the old highway and grind away past the swamps.  We pass up one small grocery at the first intersection we come to, pushing up the hill and continuing on.  At the outskirts of the next “town” on our map, we find Jim’s Grocery, a small concrete block building at a crossroad.  Jim is a retired state trooper and keeps an eye on the restless young men who frequent the store.  He says the town is just past the school where his wife works.  So it is, but “town” is a church and a few houses,  situated on a high spot of ground.

We pass a group of homeless persons on bikes, camped at a ball field near a more-prosperous-looking church.  Church is just letting out, so we have a flurry of  traffic overtaking us ahead, as the terrain becomes more hilly and homes become horse ranches and estates.  We reach the outskirts of Walterboro to note our trailer tire is going low again.  We pump it up and continue on, meeting a young man on a bicycle and chatting a bit as we both push our bikes uphill into town on a busy road with a curb, no shoulder, and busy traffic.

In town, the main street is being repaved, down to one narrow lane, which we share with cars and trucks, dodging around construction barriers placed around the drain grates, then pulling into driveways to let cars pass.  Walterboro is hilly: we make a left turn, again toward the freeway, and push on the sidewalk up a long hill before riding through the freeway interchange to our motel.

We have discussed this, before and during our trip, that we will have mission checkpoints that depend on our abilities and the conditions to continue:  The road ahead, through Charleston, has some long days between towns, and more old, no-shoulder roads with heavy traffic.  The last few days, we have battled rain, headwinds, and heavy traffic on increasingly bad roads, making, at most, 40 km, sometimes half that.  The path ahead has some 60 km days, then up to 80 km.  We have arrived at the end of our daily rides exhausted and hungry, with few places to eat.  Walterboro is big enough to have car rental agencies, so the die is cast–we will continue our East Coast Expedition, but on a more equal footing with the traffic and distances, by rental car.

Since leaving Orlando, we have pedaled nearly 600 km (370 miles).  We’ve had some good days with great scenery, and some bad days, with a lot of pain, struggle, and poor accommodations.  We’ve met interesting people, and been met with the indifference to outsiders that comes inevitably around freeway service stops in poor rural areas.  We’ve tried to be cautious and flexible, as when we elected to bypass stormy weather and dangerous roads by self-sagging between Folkston and Savannah via U-Haul truck, an expensive but necessary solution.  We have committed to a three-week car rental, that will take us through the most important points on the East Coast  on our “must-see” checklist, then cross-country to the midwest to visit relatives before returning home early, where we will ride again, on our beloved rail trails and quiet byways in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain West, in a manner befitting our station as senior cyclists.

To be continued…

Once again, we are planning a self-supported bicycle tour.  When we told our son our plan, he said, “I know that people do that ride, but in their 70s?”  We said, “Yes, they do.”  Well, we know of at least one who did, this ride, and more, at 70.  “That ride” is the Atlantic Coast Route.  We’ve done the Fort Lauderdale to Key West (actually, only to Marathon) part of the route before, so we are starting at our niece’s house in Orlando and heading north, angling out to the coast north of Daytona Beach.  This cuts the north-bound part of the route from  4200km to a mere 3400km.  But, we added a 2000km west-bound leg to make the trip more worthwhile.

Our route will take us up to the St. John’s River, the border between Florida and Georgia, then inland to U.S. 17, which we will follow or closely parallel through Savannah and Charleston, then to the Outer Banks; Okracoke, Hatteras, and Kitty Hawk, before heading inland to Williamsburg, Richmond, and Washington, DC.  Should we have built up enough stamina by then to tackle the hills, we will continue up through Amish country, Philadelphia, Delaware Water Gap, Poughkeepsie, and across northern Connecticut, nipping a tiny corner of northwest Rhode Island into Massachusetts, then back out to the coast at Portsmouth, New Hampshire and skirting the inlets of the Maine coast to Bar Harbor.

If we are still game for more riding, we will turn west, heading over the mountains into Canada, visiting Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto before crossing back into the U.S. at Port Huron, across Michigan to Muskegon, ferry  to Milwaukee, then ride on to Madison, for a total trip of about 5000 km (3000 miles). We plan to visit relatives in the Midwest, probably by rental car, then by train home, perhaps with a stopover in North Dakota. We could be gone as long as four months, mid-March through mid-July, traveling at 50-80 km per day, six days a week.  Or, we could decide we’ve had enough fun a few hundred kilometers down the road and be home much sooner.  At our age, we’ve learned to be flexible in our planning.

At this stage, six weeks out from the start of the bicycle phase but only a month before departure by air and rental car to visit family in the Southwest on the way to Florida, we have a lot of planning to do: pouring over the maps and using Google Street View to check for shoulders on busy highways and bridges; checking on campgrounds, Warm Showers hosts, and motels, etc.  We’ve been reading other tourists’ blogs along the route to get an idea of facilities, traffic, roads, and trails.  We plan to deviate some from the Adventure Cycling Association maps, which take a more inland route through the Carolinas and Georgia to avoid busy roads and long bridges.  But, that route necessitates 100-km out and back excursions  to Savannah and Charleston, both of which are on our “must see” list.  The coastal route is a designated Georgia bike route, but rider reports show there are few actual bicycle lanes or even wide shoulders and  the off-road trails are mostly unimproved: our bike doesn’t do well with sand and gravel.

We’ve rounded out our supplies for the trip, with a new sleeping bag system, new GPS with maps, auxiliary battery packs to keep the GPS and phones charged, spare parts, tires, and tubes for the bike.  The proliferation of electronics marks the biggest change (other than being 30 years older and on a different bike) since our first tours back in the 1980s.  We soon need to do a trial loading of the trailer to avoid overloading it like we did on Tour 2013.  Everything needs to fit inside and the gross weight kept under 45 kg (100lb).  We also co-opted the front rack off the ’86 Santana to give a bit more gear handling space, though we need to keep the on-bike weight low, as we’re heavier than the load limit of the bike already–not having been successful at slimming down over the winter.  Finally, we will need to clean and disassemble the bike and ship it and our camping and riding gear to Florida.

Meanwhile, we haven’t been riding–it’s been a rainy winter here in the Pacific Northwest.  We worked out at the gym when we were at Lake Chelan a few weeks ago, and just today took the time to get a 30-minute workout on the stationary bikes, Judy at the gym down the hill, me on my ’79 Fuji and wind trainer in the basement.  We’ll have to step that up over the next month, plus get out on the road if the weather clears, to make sure the bike is in good mechanical shape and test out any handling issues with the front rack.  And, lastly, order 90 days worth of prescriptions.  We’ve engaged a house sitter to stay with the cat and keep the houseplants alive while we’re gone, so we’re not quite off on extended expedition like some of our Warm Showers guests over the years.

Note: This trip, should it be successful, will entail roughly one million pedal revolutions. But, spread out over three months, this is about the equivalent of 20,000 steps per day, which is just twice the recommended 10,000 minimum for people of any age. The bicycle flattens hills somewhat and lengthens the effective stride to more than 12 feet on the flats (with a tail wind), so it is faster and easier than walking. 350 hours of pedaling at an average output of 300 watts (total of both riders) is the equivalent of a bit more than 3 gallons (11.8 liters) of gasoline, or 1000 miles per gallon (236ml/100km), the most efficient transport system ever devised. OK, Gatorade runs about $6.40 a gallon, and we’ll go through about 20 gallons of it, but Gatorade tastes better than gasoline, of which we would use about 100 gallons in the hybrid car for the same trip. And, at 15km/hr on local roads, with the breeze in our faces, we’ll see a lot more of the countryside than at 100km/hr on the freeway with the windows rolled up.

Stay tuned to this channel for reports “from the road.”